Back in the mid-late '90s, I went over to a friend's house and was horrified to see them using CDs as coasters (record side up.) This seemed like the height of extravagance; a music CD at full retail cost about a month's allowance, and I never did forgive my other friend who borrowed my favorite Backstreet Boys CD and returned it all scratched up and unplayable. I knew they had more money than my family, but I just couldn't get over this cartoonish, lighting-cigars-with-Benjamins level of carelessness/wastefulness. I'm sure you can see where this is going, but I think it took me a couple more visits to get there myself.

And if the modem was on line, nobody could use the phone; and vice versa. And it was the phone, so that was a significant problem.

I remember at one of my apartments, I couldn't afford high speed internet access (or cable, for a long time, the local suburban cable monopoly overcharged drastically), so I'd use a dial up connection to get online. (Before anyone asks, this was back around 2004, and the only place around here I could get any free wi-fi was Caribou Coffee - where you had to buy a drink to get a code that got you a couple of hours' of access - and my parents house. The nearest library to me didn't have it at the time).

I forget if I was using an AOL access number or what, but I could choose which number the computer would dial on my landline (I didn't have a cell phone either) and away I went. I'm sure you can see where this is going - the phone company changed the calling areas or something, so suddenly my access number a few towns over became a long distance charge.

Last year, Verizon FiOS stopped supporting their email for their customers; one of the two options was to keep your Verizon email address, but it would be administered through AOL.

Yes, it was last year; I dropped my Verizon email address and now use Gmail.
I think most of us here (in the USA at least) had AOL at one point in our lives. I do remember a friend of mine collecting those CDs and covering a wall of his basement with them. He showed me a photo when the project(?) was done and it did not look bad at all.

ETA: LTTAM: the teeny-tiny size of the expiration on store-issued coupons. Who supplies your fonts, the US Mint?
Looking at you Giant Food!!

Microsoft has added video advertisements to their Windows 10 solitaire games collection (the built-in one). Now even that simple time-waster has been rendered unpalatable. Sure, Win10 fixed some significant issues I'd been having under the otherwise-excellent Win7, but everything else about it has been execrable. And now this.

Microsoft has added video advertisements to their Windows 10 solitaire games collection (the built-in one). Now even that simple time-waster has been rendered unpalatable. Sure, Win10 fixed some significant issues I'd been having under the otherwise-excellent Win7, but everything else about it has been execrable. And now this.

Does Windows 10 still have issues when it comes to mouse/pointer settings? I downloaded Windows 10 about six months after it came out, but got rid of it because it would not let me do that most basic of tasks: changing the pointer settings from right to left handed.
I'll stick with Windows 8; I don't use all those dumb charms or whatever they're called anyway.

whenever I see "new and improved" on food products I think to myself that there was obviously something consumers didn't like about it the first time.

Interesting.

I can understand seeing that implication; but what I tend to think to myself is 'they've figured out a way to make it that doesn't cost them as much, and are trying to convince customers that it's an improvement, when it actually makes the product worse.'

Occasionally, of course, there actually is an improvement. But I very often think it was better the old way.

In some cases, it may be "we've discovered a way to dumb/water down (depending on the product) what makes our product distinctive, so now it is more appealing to a greater number of people -- even if we lose fans of that distinctiveness."

While we've been getting some smoke in Roseburg from the fires to the south, so far it hasn't been too bad this year. Unlike last year, when the smoke was ripping at your eyes and lungs as long as you were outside.